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Stereotype threat

Oct 10, 2010 • Karen

My first open-source software patch was made September 30. Today, October 10, was my first case of stereotype threat related to coding directed at me. Given the kind of sentiments that are common in FLOSS as a whole, I was probably overdue for some idiot saying something. It still disrupts your head a little bit--you're trying to summarize your work and get shit done, but some arse has set up a big neon flashing arrow that points at you and says "LOOK! A GIRL." It's just a mite distracting. >.

The incident didn't go down *quite* as depicted. Yet again, I'm grateful that OpenHatch, the OSS project I'm involved with, has a high concentration of fellow lady coders and male allies who are awesome and totally rock. I didn't even hardly have to respond. :)